MONUMENTA's project «Recording and Promotion of the 19th and 20th century’s buildings in Thessaloniki"

Since November 2014, MONUMENTA has been running the project “Recording and Promotion of the 19th and 20th century’s buildings in Thessaloniki”. The project aims to research and record all the buildings dated in the period 1830-1940 still preserved in the municipality of Thessaloniki, and also to acknowledge, protect and promote them. Apart from the photographic documentation during the survey, old photos, documents, architectural drawings are collected and interviews are conducted. One thousand buildings have been recorded so far, in three municipal communities of Thessaloniki. Since 2016, the project has been supported with the exclusive donation of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

The project is coordinated and implemented by a team of architects: Stavros Apotsos, Fotini Gkougkoustamou, Nikos Karayiannis, Eleni Kyriakidou, Stella Rosikopoulou, Lenia Stephanidou, in collaboration with the architect Katerina Chatzikonstantinou and the photographer Stergios Karavatos. Scientific advisors are Dr Aleka Karadimou-Gerolympou, Emeritus Professor of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and Dr Vasilis Kolonas, Professor at University of Thessaly. Meanwhile, there are many volunteers as part of the survey team.

Apart from the documentation, a lot of activities run in parallel in order to raise awareness for the historic buildings in the daily life of the citizens, such as photographic walks, tours, presentations and photography workshops. All the collected material is archived on an open access database, implemented with Open-Source Software (OSS), which will act as an inventory for Thessaloniki’s architectural heritage. In the database the interested parties will have the opportunity to retrieve information and to upload data for any building from 19th and 20th century.

For further information about the Project you may visit our blog as well as our social media profile. In case you are interested, we need volunteers!